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A RECENTLY FOUND PORTRAIT MEDALLION 



...OF.. 



JACQUES CARTIER 



BY 
DR. JOHN M. CLARKE 
Direc^r of New York State Museum 
Albany 




This wooden medallion, 20 inches in diameter, bears on the back the deeply carved date 
1704 and the initials J. C. It was found between the outer and inner "skms" of an ancient house 
in the French fishing village of Cape des Rosiers, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river, 
November, 1908, and was the stern shield of some French vessel wrecked on that coast. The 
face is that of Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada. 



A RECENTLY FOUND PORTRAIT MEDALLION 
.... OF .... 

JACQUES CARTIER 



BY 
DR. JOHN M. CLARKE 
Director of New York State Museum 
Albany 



Read before the New York State Historical Association 

at its Annual Meeting held in Mount Vernon, 

October 19th and 20th, 1909 



El 



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1000 SEPARATES FOR 
PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 



GLKN8 FALLS PUBLISHING CO. 

PRINTERS 

GLENS FALLS, N. Y. 




The San Malo picture of Cartier; from Parkman's reproduction 



A RECENTLY FOUND PORTRAIT MEDALLION 
OF JACQUES CARTIER 

By JOHN M. CLARKE 

Director of the State Museum 

By way of introduction to the particular purpose of this paper it 
is desirable to take note of the known portraits of the famous nav- 
igator and discoverer of New France, Jacques Cartier, some of 
which have commonly passed as authentic pictures. 

The best known of these is the painting by Riss which hangs in 
the Hotel de Ville of Cartier 's home town, San Malo. This has been 
reproduced in several forms and probably the best copy of it is that 
given by Parkman, taken directly from the painting {Pioneers of 
France in the New World, 1899). According to Parkman this was 
executed in 1839. Probably most of us are familiar with this half 
length standing figure of the captain, resting his left arm on the 
solid gunwale of his caravel and his young bearded chin in his hand, 
his head capped with the Breton tufted hat, his flowing robe belted 
at the waist and hung with sword and rapier, his penetrating eyes 
gazing intently over the expanse of the unswept sea, and his right 
hand pressed flat and hard againt the region of his appendix. This 
picture was redrawn by the Canadian artist Hamel with some quite 
distinct effects upon the physiognomy of the subject, and it is 
Hamel's picture that has been most frequently used to illustrate 
English books on the French occupation. In the Tross edition of 
the Belation Originale of the flrst or 1534 voyage* the face of this 
picture is reproduced as a medallion on the title page, though 
reversed in pose and with alterations in the expression that make 
it the face of a less forceful conception than the original. Indeed 
were it not for the positive statement of the editor that it is taken 
from the San Malo picture, one might doubt that both were design- 
ed to represent the same man. That of San Malo has a more 
copious supply of beard on cheeks and chin and a more intent and 

*Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 
1534: H. Michelant and A. Rame. Paris. Libraire Tross. 1867. 



6 

penetrating gaze in the eyes, which, in the Hamel picture, is intens- 
ified into an introspective stare. Cartier was 43 years old when he 
made his first voyage to New France and these two portraits repre- 
sent a man of about such years and hirsuteness. 

Another picture is reproduced as a medallion in Rame's Note sur 
le Manoir de Jacques Cartier, Tross edition, 1867, published with 
the Relation Onginale referred to. This is the face of an older, 
heavily bearded man whose locks fully sixty years have whitened. 
It is stated in this Tross edition that this print is in the Departe- 
ment des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale, but I am under 
obligations to M. de la Ronciere of that bureau for the information 
that it is not in that collection and there seems much doubt among 
several writers if this was ever intented to represent Cartier. 

M. de la Ronciere has also called my attention to the Vallard map 
of eastern North America, made about or soon after 1543, whereon is 
a group of figures which have been supposed to represent the land- 
ing of Cartier and his crew among the Indians of Gaspe. This 
map has been reproduced in J. G. Kohl's History of the Discovery 
of Maine (1869) and while a curious and interesting embellishment 
of the map, the figures are conventional and perhaps fairly com- 
pared with the bizarre monsters which dot the land and sea on 
many of the old charts. It seems evident that the comment kindly 
made to me by Mr. H. P. Biggar expresses the proper estimate of 
this picture. "It must always be very doubtful," he says, 
' ' whether any of the figures in the French group on that map can 
be taken as representing a likeness of Jacques Cartier. They are 
certainly Cartier 's people but we have no proof of any kind that 
he is among them. ' ' 

Dr. Kohl gave a different interpretation of these figures, con- 
ceiving them designed to depict Roberval's occupation of Quebec, 

* * * 

At the mouth of the St Lawrence river, indeed at the very point 
on its south shore where the navigators of many generations and 
the marine usage of today have regarded the river as ending and 
the Gulf as beginning, lies Cape des Rosiers. It is an angry rem- 
nant of black rocks cut into a terrace by the waves of an older sea 
but sending its menacing point well out into the waters. It faces 




Alleged portrait of Cartier from Rame's 
Manoir de Jacques Cartier, 1867. 




Head of the San Malo portrait as re- 
produced in the Relation Originale, 1867. 




The Hamel portrait from the Sam Malo picture; from Shea's Charle'voix 



fair and full the prevailing northw^est storms of the expanded 
river, here more than 100 miles across. Beyond it towards the 
Gulf lies first a little cove and fishing beach, then the limestone 
cliffs at once rise high and sheer in majestic escarpments along the 
Bon Ami rocks eastward to Cape Gaspe, the outermost point of the 
Gaspe coast. Behind it lower the gray bare walls of mighty Mt. 
St. Alban, abrupt and unscalable, their summit at 1800 feet, capped 
with evergreen of spruce and fur. Cape des Rosiers lies on the 
northern side of an unusual and fascinating spot on the Atlantic 
coast. The wall of mountains behind it runs six miles to the land 's 
end and is in places but a half mile wide. It is a single range of the 
Appalachian mountain system sliced vertically in half. One half, 
the northern, the eternal sea has devoured, the other slopes by 
easier declivities to the water of Gaspe Bay and on its tilted sides 
and along its beaches life is played out in some of its gentlest and 
most primitive phases. Cape des Rosiers has been from the ear- 
liest days a fearful menace and disastrous obstacle to navigation 
in the gulf and river St Lawrence. Where records fail, tradition 
of the country side tells of many a craft lost on its rocks. Indeed 
to the struggling settlements of this and other coasts in the gulf 
a shipwreck has often been a godsend and, if hereditary stories 
are to be credited, the old settlers of this place, like those on the 
island of Anticosti further out in the river's mouth, were not 
guiltless of inviting these mischances. 

As one crosses this little Gaspe peninsula, the eastermost tip of the 
Appalachian Mountains, stretching its index finger out into 
the Gulf, the single road that leads to Cape des Rosiers rises from 
the waters of Gaspe Bay at Grande Greve, soon reaches the mount- 
ain summit and thence drops downward at an angle that is almost 
unbelievable for its obtuseness, into the cove of this Cape. Until 
the autumn of 1908 the first of the fishermen's houses to meet the 
traveler down this impossible declivity called a road, lay beneath 
the lower stretches of the long cliff and was occupied by and the 
property of a m^n named Smith, English by name, French by 
tongue and habit of life. For sixty years this house had been in the 
Smith family and before that, was long the property of James Eves ; 
it had been occupied for many generations — how many I have 



8 

not been able to learn, I have been told by Mr. A. W. Dolbel whose 
acquaintance with this coast dates back for nearly fifty years, that 
the Smith house was the oldest in that settlement. So old was it, 
at any rate, that the ravages of time made it a precarious shelter, 
and its owner at the time I have mentioned, Marcil Smith, deter- 
mined to tear it down and built! afresh. In dismantling the old 
house Smith discovered a dummy window unknown to him or his 
predecessors. This hole had been battened up on the outside and 
sealed up inside. In between these two walls where it had rested 
concealed for unknown generations lay the object which is here 
reproduced for the first time. It was taken by the finder, Marcil 
Smith, to the store of the William Fruing Company, one of the 
oldest fishing estabishments of Gaspe, only a short distance away, 
and was obtained by John Lemasurier, an intelligent Jerseyman, 
the agent of the Company at Cape des Rosiers. My very excell- 
ent friends of the Fruing Company with most considerate thought- 
fulness laid the object aside till the time of my next visit to this 
country, and thus I acquired it. 

This object is a great wooden medallion, 20 inches in diameter, 
carrying the relief portrait of a man in middle life, full bearded, 
capped with tufted hat or bonnet, with jacket buttoned high about 
a sturdy neck and covered with a collared surtout. The carving 
is overlain with many a coat of paint and where this crust has flak- 
ed off one may see the successive paintings in red, black, yellow 
and blue ; now its central portion is of ocher red, surrounded by a 
yellow border, except where the bust projects above and below. 
On the back of this medallion, which is unpainted and browned 
with weather, is the deep carved date, 1704, and beneath the date 
the initials, J. C. These numerals and letters are as deeply weather- 
ed as all the rest of this unpainted surface and are unquestionably 
contemporaneous with it. 

This very interesting object presents two inquiries : 

1) What is it? 

2) What evidence is there that it represents Cartier? 

There is little uncertainty among the seafaring folk who have 
seen it as to what it is. Too many ships have gone ashore on the 
cape and cove of Rosiers to leave much doubt abroad that it is the 




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relic of some vessel that lost its life and perhaps that of its crew 
in this abattoir of ships. The schooners and barks of the early 
1700 's on that coast were mostly fishei-men from Breton and Nor- 
mandj^ and it was the custom then and to a much later day for 
them to wear elaborate figureheads and sternshields. There is 
barely a fishing estabishment in all Gaspe that does not display 
somewhere about its buildings the figurehead or nameplate of some 
lost ship of later years than this. Great wrought iron nails pro- 
jecting from the back of this medallion and sorely twisted, indicate 
that it was wrenched with violence from its moorings and the 
surface where the paint has been rubbed off near the top and the 
grain of the wood frayed out, tell plainly how the surf had battered 
it upon the pebbles of the Rosiers beach. It was a shield nailed 
against the flat stern of a Breton schooner. 

In regard to the evidence for the identity of the portrait, the cap- 
ital letters J. C. on the back of the medallion must be, I think, under 
the circumstances, fairly regarded as indicative of the intentions 
of the carver. It is easy to say they have some other meaning, 
may be the initials of the workman himself, but certainly they are 
prima facie evidence of the intention to portray Cartier and the 
realization of such intention that in the judglment of the workman 
required no other explanation than that vouchsafed by the initials. 
We must not forget that Cartier 's name and the fame of his achieve- 
ments and doubtless his features, as recorded up to that time, were 
the common possession and the proper pride of the Breton sailors. 
The shipbuilders of that day and place remembered and revered 
him. This Breton had discovered and taken possession of a new 
world for his sovereign and had brought luster and honor to his 
calling. Probably the vessel that carried the sternshield bore his 
name and may quite likely have sailed from his home port, for the 
Malouins w^re abundant frequenters of this coast during all the 
French ascendency. 

It must be admitted that this carving is an admirable piece of 
workmanship in wood. The successive coats of paint on it have 
helped to cover and soften some of the original detail and perhaps 
have concealed some of the action of the features without loss of 
vigor. 



10 

It lends itself to analysis. The San Malo painting and the more 
recent portrait by Hamel both wore the light Milan bonnet, soft, 
low crowned, with turned-up brim. It was a style of hat which had 
a long life during the 16th and in the 17th centuries, variously 
slashed and ornamented. But it was the hat of a gentleman, of the 
gentleman of the faubourgs and chateaux, not the head piece of a 
sailor. Cartier was a freeholder, the Sieur of the manor of 
Limoilou, and as such this hat was appropriate to his social station, 
but this social station was not achieved until his voyages were over 
and he was rewarded with the favor of his sovereign. Such 
fragile headgear did not go with his days of service under his 
patron, the Admiral Chabot, nor does it match the gales of the 
North Atlantic and the Gulf of St Lawrence. It is little likely 
that the delicate starched ruffs at his neck and wrist, his long 
sleeveless and belted doublet with which the San Malo and the 
Hamel pictures make him fall in line with the costume of the time ; 
that these were the proper garb for the pilot and ship captain of 
the 1500 's. One does not travel today on the angry Gulf of St 
Lawrence in evening clothes and the skipper of the 16th century 
went equipped for his rough work. The tufted bonnet with its 
tight head band, the high necked jacket and heavy surtout were 
the proper and historic gear for the sailor of his time. 

The face on this medallion is very much as other artists have 
conceived Cartier and it is posed in profile as the others have been. 
There is an undeniable resemblance between this protrait and those 
already known, in trim of face and beard and the contour of its 
physiognomy, though the features compared Avith the San Malo 
and Hamel pictures are of a man older and more hardened by 
exposure. There is even one detail of agreement which suggests a 
common origin for these conceptions. In the San Malo portrait 
there is no hair in the beard growing in front of the ear, nor is 
there in the Rosiers medallion — perhaps an indication of an in- 
dividual facial peculiarity. I am disposed to have confidence in 
the fact that all the evidence, intrinsic and extrinsic, that can be 
extracted from this very interesting object bears out the belief 
that the face was intended to represent Cartier. It is the rugged 
conception of it as it lay, authentically or traditionally, in the 



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Date and initials on back of Cartier medallion 



' ' • » MHHWflB 



11 

minds of his fellow countrymen, particularly of the artisan of 1704 
who created this carving. And it further appears from all this 
evidence to be the eai'liest of all attempts at portraiture of the dis- 
coverer. It is at least 205 years old, even though it was made 170 
years after the discovery of Canada. 

It is of rather extraordinary interest that this relique should have 
been found close on the track of Cartier's voyages. It was just 
around the Cape of Gaspe, six miles away, and thence up Gaspe 
Bay on the Sandy Beach near its head that Jaques Cartier went 
ashore, erected the cross and lilies of France with this posie : ' ' Vive 
le Roy de France ' ' and took possession of the land in the name of 
his king. He did not go so far as Cape des Rosiers upon his first 
voyage yet he could barely have failed to see its projecting point 
as he passed out Gaspe Bay and across the St Lawrence. On his 
second and third voyage he did pass it on his way up to Hochelaga. 

In the light that has shone so brilliantly on Champlain, the organ- 
izer of government in New France, the fame and service of the 
great captain whose untiring zeal in the king's service twice explor- 
ed the St Lawrence river after having first found the Gaspe coast, 
has been somewhat obscured, but those who today own their alle- 
giance to the sailor of San Malo might do well to place on that 
conspicuous point of the Gaspe peninsula that reaches far out in 
the gulf and which every vessel passing up the gTeat river must 
see, some worthy and commanding monument to the discoverer of 
their country. 



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